In text and pictures, Jan Mogensen shows a sympathetic understanding of how young children experience the world around them

By : Lise Lotte Larsen

That Jan Mogensen’s picture books should have become one of Danish literature’s best- selling exports is perhaps due to the fact that they are charaterized by a universiality of time and place. His pictures and stories are neither distinctively Danish nor bound to a specific period.

   Another explanation could be that his books with sympathetic insight and friendliness, speak to the youngest consumers of picture books within their own framework of understanding. The reality portrayed is not that of an everyday, but of the more expansive fairy-tale, a reality which gives both voice and life to everyone who inhabits it, children and teddy bears alike, and is recognized by all children and adults from their own play.

Teddy

   The best-known and best-loved, both at home and abroad, of Jan Mogensen’s picture books, the seven books about Teddy’s adventures within and beyond the boundaries of the nursery, all reflect this special understanding of the preoccupation of little children, such as, getting lost in the big, dangerous and enchanting world.

   But, irrespectively of the degree of tension and uneasy suspense, the theme is always treated in such a way that the child is left with their confidence in the world strengthened. And as the leading role is played by a Teddy who is heavily dependent on his ‘parents’ – the two children he lives with – is easy for the child reader to identify with him. Amidst all the excitement, however, this identification never becomes too close; Teddy is, when all is said and done, a teddy bear and not a child. Most of the Teddy-books appeared during the 1980s, but in the 1990s Jan Mogensen has continued his charming study in the emotional life of the teddy bear with pictures for Julies bamse (Julie’s Teddy).

It is characteristic of Jna Mogensen’s pictures that the viewpoint is often lower than the subject. This corresponds to the child’s point of view in the relation to the world and it gives the picture a delightful feeling of calm and spacious frankness. It also means that often a section of sky provides the background and resonator for the pictures. And, in Jan Mogense’s fine watercolour technique, this resonator is painted with evocative variation.

   Jan Mogensen’s simple line transforms bears, rabbits and other animals into engaging individuals with charisma and expression. This is the same style in which he draws, with humorous simplification, a mother and her son for Historien om den lille dreng (The Story of the Little Boy).

   This little family has an odd problem: the mother will not go to sleep at night. The boy tries all the well-known tricks such as a bed-time story, a glass of water in bed, a little indulgence, a little of the wagging finger, but it is not until all attempts at ‘upbringing’ have proved fruitless that the mother climbs into the boy’s bed and falls asleep.

Philosophy for children

The current rend is to write books about philosophy for children. And indeed Landet hvor alting er stort (The Country where Everything is Big is a part of this trend – but in its own original, child-friendly manner.

   This is not a book about philosophy, it is philosophy itself and, as such, offers the experience of an intellectual exploration, in keeping with the way in which the child makes no distinction between experiencing the world and philosophising about it.

   The central character in the book is a girl called Sofie (perhaps nor a name chosen at random?) and the story is about a trip she goes on with her Uncle Ib. They visit the Ant Wizard in The Country where Everything is Big (the ant traditionally being the one you consult on matters of wisdom) and in the this country where people are ant-sized – or vice versa – Sofie responds to the world from a completely new viewpoint. The readers share her experience through the well-written text and evocative watercolours.

This article was first published in Danish Children’s Literature no 6

Translated by Gaye Kynoch